Book Image

Effective Platform Product Management

By : Tabassum Memon
Book Image

Effective Platform Product Management

By: Tabassum Memon

Overview of this book

Scaling a platform is a lot different than scaling a product. This is why product managers developing or transitioning to a platform model are often facing completely new challenges – both technical and strategic. But if you want to build the next Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, or a completely new type of platform, then you need to adopt a platform-first approach to change how you invent, develop, and market solutions. This is where Effective Product Platform Management comes in. This book addresses product management as a critical pillar of platform development. It'll help you understand the difference between traditional and modern product management for platforms and even decide whether the platform business model is the way to go for you. As you progress, you’ll be able to build the right platform strategy, define the MVP, and focus on ongoing backlog prioritization for successful platforms. This book will also walk you through the practical steps and guidelines that can ease your organization’s transition from linear products to platforms. By the end of this platform product management book, you’ll have learned the essential aspects of product management for building successful and scalable platforms. You’ll also have a clear understanding of the next steps you need to take to perfect and execute your new platform strategy – and take on the world.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Building the Right Strategy for the Platform Business Model
6
Section 2: Building the Platform
10
Section 3: Measuring the Performance of the Platform

Traditional product management and platform product management

Product Management 101 tells us that every product goes through four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. But I believe that no one should plan for the decline stage. It might happen due to circumstances beyond our control, but the plan should be to revamp and restart in that case.

I also believe that there is one more stage before the introduction phase. A lot of time and effort goes into research, building hypotheses, and validating those hypotheses, and all this happens before introducing the product. Some people call it part of the introduction phase, but I like to call it pre-introduction. Hence, when you are planning, you should plan for the following four stages of a product:

  • Pre-introduction
  • Introduction
  • Growth
  • Maturity

Let's look at these four stages from a platform product management lens and see what the differences in each of these stages are when building a...